1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to the field of automatic telephone call distributors and, more particularly, to an automatic call distributor with an automatic preannouncement system.
2. Description of the Related Art Including Information Disclosed Under 37 C.F.R. Section 1.97-1.99
Automatic call distributors employing a multiport switch controlled by a central processing unit for selectively interconnecting a plurality of agent sets, each having a telephone, with customer telephonic sets of an external telephonic switching system are well known. Examples of such call distributor systems are shown in patent applications U.S. Ser. No. 07/770,197 of Jones et al. entitled "Multichannel Telephonic Switching Network With Different Signaling Formats and Connect/PBX Treatment Selectable For Each Channel", filed Oct. 2, 1991; U.S. Pat. No. 5,140,611 of Jones et al. entitled "Pulse Modulated Self-Clocking and Self-Synchronizing Data Transmission and Method for a Telephonic Communication Switching System", issued Aug. 18, 1992 and U.S. Pat. No. 5,127,004 of Lenihan et al. entitled "Tone and Announcement Message Code Generator for a Telephonic Switching System and Method", issued Jun. 30, 1992.
Typically an agent stationed at an agent set in known distributor systems answers many different types of calls from customers during a work day. In these known systems the agent receives information about the type of customer call on a visual display at the agent set when a call is distributed to the agent. The agent reads the information on the display to determine what type of call (i.e. sales, inventory, customer service, billing etc.) he is receiving. When answering a call the agent greets the caller with a standard greeting which is usually specific to the application being served. For example, an agent may answer a sales call with the greeting, "Welcome to sales. May I help you?" Furthermore, the same agent may also answer calls of a different application such as customer service and present the caller with the standard greeting of "Welcome to customer service. May I help you?"
To help relieve the burden on agents of repeating the same standard greetings hundreds of times during a work shift, the known call distributor systems provide external hardware preannouncers which answer customer calls from customer units of an external network. In one known system, the voice message is stored at the agent set. Each time the agent moves to a different unit, a new voice message must be recorded at the new set which reduces agent efficiency.
A solution to this problem in system in systems with individual preannouncement at each agent set is shown in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 07/926,891 of Zdenek et al., filed Aug. 7, 1992, entitled "Telephonic Console With Prerecorded Voice Message and Method" in which prerecorded voice messages are stored on a memory disk or card which is carried by the agent who prerecorded the message. The memory disk is releasably connectable to any play back unit of any of the agent sets to eliminate the need to re-record the message when there is a change of agents between different agent sets. Since these preannouncers are external and are not internally linked within the system, the agent must remove these disks and carry them when changing shifts or moving from one telephonic agent set to another. This creates a possible risk of an agent misplacing, losing or damaging the external preannouncer disk, the replacement of which is time consuming and costly. Additionally, if the agent forgets to bring the preannouncer memory disk to work or when they shift between agent sets, time must be taken for new messages to be recorded on another disk or for the original disk to be retrieved.